Dhaka, Feb 02 – The Returning Officer of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) yesterday said the problems with the network and tabs were responsible for the delay of the announcement of election results.
DNCC Returning Officer Md Abul Kashem came up with the statement for the delay of the announcement of election results here.“We set all preparation at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre to announce our election results but as the schedule of elections was changed, we had to move to Sher-e-Banglanagar Agriculture University. The network system here was not good and the tabs had some problems,” he said.
It took at least 11 hours to announce the final results of the elections though the elections were ended at 4 pm on Saturday.
He said, “As soon as the elections were over, the results were announced at each centre but it took time to reach the result to us as the area is big. So it was delayed to announce poll results. Electronic Voting Machines did not have any trouble,” he added.
“The elections were held from 8 am to 4 pm. The centres announce the poll results by 5 pm or 6 pm. The election area was big but there was network trouble as the internet speed was slow. We were late to announce results. So it was late. We are sorry for it,” the Returning Officer said.
Asked about the gazette of the election results, he said, “We would send it to the EC and the gazette would be published within a week.”
The DNCC Returning Officer announced the poll result saying the voter turnout was 25.30 per cent.
The total number of voters under DNCC was 30,10,273 but only 7,62,188 votes were cast.
In the DNCC election, AL mayoral candidate Atiqul Islam got 4,47,211 votes to defeat Tabith Awal of BNP, who bagged 2,64,161 by 183,050 votes.
Other mayoral candidate, Sajedul Haque of Communist Party of Bangladesh got 15,122 votes, Anisur Rahman of National Peoples party got 3853 votes, Shahin Khan of Democratic Progressive Party got 2111 and Sheikh Md Fazle Bari Masud bagged 28,200 votes.
On the other hand, Returning Officer of DSCC Abdul Baten said 29 per cents votes were cast. There were 24,53,159 voters but only 7,13,050 votes were cast in DSCC polls.
Ruling party contestant Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh won the DSCC election with 424,595 votes. He defeated BNP’s Ishraque Hossain, who got 236,512, by 188,083 votes.
The other mayoral candidate Abdus Samad Sujon of Gonofront got 12,687 votes, Mohammad Saifuddin of Jatiya Party got 5,593 votes, Akhtaruzzaman Alis Ayatullah of Bangladesh Congress got 2421 votes, Abdur Rahman of Islami Andolon Bangladesh got 26,525 votes and Bahrane Sultan Bahar of National Peoples Party got 3155 votes.
Many of the candidates would lose their deposit for getting low votes in the elections.
Under the election law, candidates have to deposit a certain amount of money to the government exchequer to stand in the election. Candidates must obtain at least one-eighth of the total vote cast in their seats to get the money back. – Staff Reporter
